Rat - YA Fantasy

11

Marning's frown returned. Burgen was too much of a clown for comfort. "As long as this won't mean the end of Auranoran history," Marning said dryly as he slowly stood up, his old bones creaking. These days, whenever movement was required, it was accompanied by sighing.

Burgen leapt to his feet as swiftly as a rabbit. "I must go to another appointment." Marning told him. "Let us start your lessons tomorrow."

"Yes, Grand Master! Fare ye well!"

Marning bristled at Burgen's voice, before he shook his head, clucked his tongue and, joints groaning, trudged off.

***

Like many Wielders, Marning did not believe in the Gods or the afterlife or any of the other nonsense they offered. Believing in Gods was a popular habit of the masses of people who were not Magic Wielders. However it was not necessary to completely discard everything connected with religion. Tradition still had its value.

Many Wielders practiced tradition on occasion, Marnng included. The ability to Wield magic often didn't travel by blood, A Wielder could appear in any family, from any class in society. Only in magic were the people of Auranora equal. Cooper used to say that if people could be equal in the potential to be Wielders, they should be equal in everything.

Cooper often voiced dangerous, subversive ideas like that, and only he could get away with it.

Given his position, when Marning travelled outside the palace grounds and into the city streets he was expected to do so in style. But he found being carried in a sedan chair an embarrassment, and coming out by carriage or on horseback was a hassle, so he allowed himself to choose another mode of travel:

A magic rug.

It was a vehicle of his own creation, a beautiful rug woven from gold thread and fine silk. Of course it had been Cooper, inspired by children's stories, who gave him the idea; of course it had been Cooper who figured out how it could be accomplished. But the King insisted that Auranora's Grand Magic Master would still be accompanied by the proper escort, thereby announcing his passage to the city people. It made the rug almost pointless, since he couldn't soar over the city buildings like he had intended to. Yet it became a trademark spectacle associated with the Grand Master's appearance.

He sat cross-legged on the rug, which floated a foot above the ground, with two novice magicians in front of him and two walking behind. He knew that for these young men, performing such a task was an honour. They had no other way to come into close proximity with the Grand Magic Master. Somehow, they hoped to be influenced by him by merely escorting him through the streets of the city.

Many years before, when he had been an aspiring novice himself, he remembered once escorting the then Grand Master, Old Scotch-breath Nailcklin. He had held his back so straight the whole time that his spine ached by the end of the day.

Like his spine that day, Marning's path in life had been straightforward the entire way. He discovered his Wielder abilities early on, when he was eight. He finished his magician studies at seventeen, he was apprenticed to be the next King's Magician at twenty, and he was appointed Grand Master at the young age of forty. His life had been a series of anticipations for the next position.

Until he no longer had anything to aspire to. Then he turned and looked at the path behind him, finding the magical world suddenly wanting in talent. From then on, his life became an endless search for a spark of light in the gloom of magic. In a straightforward way, like a rising sun, Cooper had stepped into the blank skies.

He was too old now, far too old, for things to stop being straightforward.

The hour was noon and the streets were busy. Crowds of people were ordered to move aside to allow the passage of the Grand Master. They pressed back in a hurry to either side of the street, some looking disgruntled at the inconvenience, others were anxious to get a good look at him. Carts had to veer out of the way, the horses pulling them stomping angrily at being ordered about so sharply. There was much yelling and pushing and stumbling associated with such passages, but the people would grow silent when Marning came into view.